The Picture, The Fight
by jacik
Summary: A couple of drabbles I wrote for LoTG. "The Picture" deals with remembering someone left behind on Earth, and "The Fight" is about a difference of opinion which leads to a physical fight between two of the group.
1. Chapter 1

**The Picture/The Fight**

These are a couple of drabbles I wrote for Land of the Giants.  
Rated K+ for action violence and mild language.  
The Picture: In what I've watched of this show so far, it hasn't actually been stated that everyone aboard Spindrift is single or without family back home. This very short story portrays how one character might deal with having left someone important on Earth.  
The Fight: This story explores the conflict that inevitably develops between two natural leaders. One, seven years younger, officially in charge, and a rational decision maker; the other, older, used to getting his own way, and prone to emotional choices; both of them risible in temper…

**The Picture**

* * *

Steve sat by the campfire, turning the small photograph over and over in his hands. It had lived in the pocket of his flight jacket for so many months that the edges had softened and frayed, and there was a light crease or two across it, which he smoothed with his finger. On other flights he had never worried about keeping the picture in his pocket; if it were to become damaged, he could always get another. But now-it was very possible he might never see the subject of the photograph again.

"Hey, Steve."

His reverie was broken by his stewardess, Betty Hamilton, who sat down next to him before noticing what he was doing. "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm disturbing you," she said quickly and moved to get up.

"No, you aren't," he said, raising a hand in reassurance. "At least-I don't know, maybe it would be good to talk about it."

"Okay, Steve," Betty said, simply, always so ready and willing to do her job as the member of Spindrift's original crew most responsible for the morale of others, including him. He supposed she saw it.

He handed the small photograph to her, and she took it gently, studying it. "She was lovely," she said, after a minute. "You must miss her very much."

Steve bowed his head into his hands silently for a moment. "So very, very much," he said, finally. "We only had two and a half years together; today would have been three."

Betty's eyes were shining with sympathetic tears. "I'm so sorry, Steve." She handed the small picture back to him, and he took it and tucked it back in the breast pocket of his red flight jacket.

They had all left behind people and things that mattered; perhaps he made his burden harder by treating the acknowledgement of it as a privilege ill-afforded by the stranded Spindrift's leader. He looked up at Betty. "Her name is Maria," he said, his own eyes wide and serious, "and she's why I have to get home."


	2. Chapter 2

**The Picture/The Fight**

**The Fight**

* * *

"I'm telling you, he can help us," Mark said, his voice raised and carrying more of an edge than was normal even for his and Captain Burton's not-infrequent arguments.

The younger man's face was calm but firmly set. "It's entirely out of the question, Mark, and you know it. Our first priority has to be protecting the ship."

Mark cut him off. "Our first priority ought to be getting off this miserable world, and as long as you're too concerned with protecting your precious ship to let me find a way to fix it up so we can fly it, you might as well hand it over to the giants for all the good it's doing us!"

"Mark, you are not bringing a giant anywhere near my ship and that's final!" Both men were shouting now, and Steve pounded his fist into the makeshift lunch table, making the watching Barry and Valerie jump.

"Steve!" Valerie cried.

"Oh, let him shout and hit things," Mark sneered. "His ship—he's just a boy playing soldier who cries when the older boys won't do things his way."

The implication held enough merit—Mark being the senior of the two men by seven years—that the industrialist might have anticipated the attack it would provoke. Steve's temper snapped, and he tore at the older man, his fist connecting with Mark's jaw in a solid blow. Mark reeled but grabbed the pilot by the upper arms, his superior arm strength just pinning the younger man's intended flurry of blows. Letting go, he returned his own punch before he was dragged to the ground by the agile young captain's throw.

As they struggled for purchase and room to swing, Mark could hear Valerie yelling behind them. "Oh, Steve, Mark! Please stop!" _If the self-important little bastard wanted a fight, he'd give it to him! _ He suddenly had an arm free, and gave Steve a blow across the mouth that sent him sprawling, his head thudding backward into the rocky ground.

"Steve!" Valerie practically shrieked this time, and Mark clambered to his feet, rubbing the hand that had delivered the winning blow.

_That should teach him…_ the surly thought died as Mark watched the pilot for signs of life. He lay still where he had sprawled, except for the trickle of blood that ran from the corner of his teeth. Mark crouched next to him, a little whisper of fear running through his head_. He hadn't meant to seriously hurt the pilot; what if he was…_ A quick hand to the neck told him Steve was stunned, not dead, and he rose, ashamed of himself for his fear, perhaps unadmittedly more ashamed for the violence which had left the other man bleeding and unconscious on the ground. "He'll be alright," he said harshly, turning away. He knew his tone sounded petulant, and he didn't look Valerie in the eye as he strode past her into the forest.

* * *

It was a long few minutes before Valerie, who had initially run after Mark before realizing it was useless and returning to the unconscious captain, heard Steve let out a moan. He lifted a hand, blinked hard and started to roll to one side. "Steve. Steve, are you okay?"

Steve put the hand to his bleeding mouth, gingerly, then turned away and spat the metallic taste out of it. "Mark?" he asked, ignoring her question.

"He's gone, Steve. I'm worried. What do you think he'll do? Bring that giant friend of his to the ship?"

"I hope he doesn't," Steve said, rubbing cautiously at his tender jaw. "But I wouldn't bet against it."

* * *

Mark leaned into the bars of the cage he'd been trapped in for several hours, and let the chill of the metal press against his aching head_. Steve hadn't been right—not exactly; the giant had been willing to help them_. _He was still sure of it_. Unfortunately, the giant had also been an unknowing patsy for the SID, and when Mark, reluctant but not ready to embark on actual mutiny, had gone back to the giant to explain that he had been unable to obtain his captain's permission to take him to the ship, the listening agents had spring their trap. The friendly giant had been taken away to prison, and Mark had endured hours of somewhat unpleasant interrogation before the SID men had given up on obtaining the location of the ship by what they had referred to as 'gentle methods'.

_Mark wasn't looking forward to whatever they had in store for him the next morning that fell under a different classification than 'gentle methods'._

No, Steve had been wrong about the giant; even so, Mark, locked in a cage in a pitch-dark cabinet inside SID headquarters, wished he had shared Steve's intuition about the situation and left the whole thing entirely alone. As it was, Steve would probably assume he'd been captured on his way to find the giant and bring him—and the whole watching SID—back to the ship. _The group would remember him as a traitor._

Mark rubbed his arms through his sleeves. It was bitingly cold inside the cabinet at night. He shuddered, only partly from the cold. _He was assuming that Steve was okay_. Even though he'd told Valerie that he would be—even though he'd argued to himself that there was no reason to be worried for him while on his way to his meeting with the giant—he'd been unable to shake the mental picture he'd last had of Steve sprawled across the ground in front of Spindrift, unmoving, taken down by his own merciless blow.

_What if the young pilot hadn't been alright? _Even Mark, who had no medical training but enough experience to know how the world worked, knew that people with head injuries could develop potentially fatal symptoms gradually, and Mark cursed himself for not staying to make sure Steve had even woken up. He'd been petty and selfish when he'd walked off, and now Mark had no allusions that he'd find a way to escape before the SID did whatever unpleasantness they had in store for him the next day; nor did he have the expectation that he would survive it.

So, he would never know if his actions had deprived the little band of survivors of _two_ of their strongest, not to mention the two people most needed to repair and fly the Spindrift. Dan could fly the ship alone, and even make limited repairs; but he was no engineer, and if it also fell to him to lead their fight for survival—_the smaller their group became, the lower the chance they would survive long enough to make their escape._

Mark lay down in the darkness in the back of the cage, closing his eyes against the darkness, and tried to let sleep take over from his restless thoughts; but the image of Steve lying where he'd left him, fate unknown, haunted his vision, and he remained awake and troubled.

* * *

Because sleep eluded him, Mark was immediately aware of the quiet rattling noises in the cabinet lock. When they appeared, his heart was immediately in his teeth; had he fallen asleep for a time after all? It was pitch black; there was no way to see his watch_. If his interrogators had come back_—the door opened, and a crack of light shown in. Although it was much dimmer than the room lights, Mark's eyes were nonetheless fully dark-adapted and the tiny light beam was blinding. Mark could see nothing.

"Mark!" It was Dan's voice.

"I'm in here," Mark called back in a half-whisper, scrambling to his feet.

The co-pilot was fumbling in the cage lock in an instant.

Mark approached him. His vision was clearing and he could see Dan, in the dark, holding the flashlight and studying the metal lock. "That lock is pretty well sealed; I don't think we'll defeat it without the key."

"Okay," Dan said. "Good thing I brought the cutting laser. Stand well back."

Mark waited as he took the hand-held tool Mark had designed to the cage bars. After a moment there was a hole large enough, and Mark climbed through. He stopped. "Dan," he said, his worry getting the better of him, "where's Steve?"

"Outside," Dan said, his voice just above a whisper. "He's leading the security guard away from that door over there." He pointed to outside door in the hallway beyond the room. "Come on, we have to climb down from this cabinet as quickly as we can."

Mark obeyed, relief lightening his climb. _The pilot was alright, and he'd be able to get that image out of his head._

* * *

Steve Burton stumbled into camp about twenty minutes after the others, breathless. Mark, who was brooding into the fire, looked up to see the younger man lean against the makeshift table, panting from an evident run.

"You're back," Mark said. "Some of us were starting to worry." He kept his tone light.

"Well, you know…" Steve puffed. "Some giants give up easier than others." He moved in toward the fire and began to warm his hands, apparently willing to ignore what had happened between them earlier that day, despite the discolored swelling that still marred the corner of his mouth.

Mark wasn't.

"Look, Steve," Mark began. "About earlier—"

"Forget it," the captain said promptly.

"I can't," Mark admitted, watching him in the firelight. "I was out of line, especially what I said about you in front of the others. And then—" _this was harder to admit_—"I shouldn't have left, not knowing that you were alright. I spent the whole evening worrying about whether my arrogance and stupidity had deprived the group of both of us."

Steve's eyes were on the fire, and Mark marveled at the younger man's ability to meditate calmly and, so often, rationally over things that invariably had Mark's own emotions twisting.

The pilot finally spoke. "You're right," he said. "Things could potentially have gone very badly. We're lucky they didn't." He rubbed unconsciously at the swelling on his face. "Look, Mark, I was just as much to blame for what happened this morning. I shouldn't have let my temper rise like that." He laughed as if to put the older man at ease. "Especially considering what a right hook you have…"

Mark smiled. _He still felt guilty, but if this man—this kid—his leader—was willing to put his mistakes in the past, then he would do his best to keep them there._ "You know, I'll try to avoid giving you the benefit of it in the future," he said.


End file.
